Replay
by tamagopants
Summary: We're upside down to each other, forming a circle that starts at our looping heads and spans out to a circumference of four boots and the hem of two coats. "We did something like this before." -Axel x Saïx oneshot, since it's 7/8 today.-


A/N: Written for AkuSai day. Enjoy :)

Disclaimer: Characters are copyright to Square Enix.

Warning: Rated T for suggestive themes.

* * *

**REPLAY**

Axel x Saïx

* * *

I don't think it's wrong to keep something you've found, if no one wants it back. If that something has been abandoned or forgotten or is now ownerless…it's all right, I think.

I come with memories. They're not _my_ memories, but I have and want to continue having them all the same.

"You're right handed."

"You're ambidextrous."

We shouldn't really be taking a break. It's our first mission, and we have to impress if we want to stay in the Organisation. But here we are, flat on our backs in matching coats and expressions, staring up at the same black sky, our fingers sifting through the sand to knit themselves together. You've always been the convincing one, the motivator in the two of us. You tell me the Superior won't know, let alone mind, that we took a five minute rest.

"And it feels nice, right?" you say to me. You tilt your chin up so that your voice is next to my ear. We're upside down to each other, forming a circle that starts at our looping heads and spans out to a circumference of four boots and the hem of two coats. "We did something like this before."

Except it was on our last day of school, not our first mission. Except we were folded between grass and sun, not hot sand and moonlight. Except I was Isa, and you were Lea.

"Being ambidextrous was a curse," you say after a minute. The ground feels warm despite it being hours after sundown. Like thick, breathing smoke, sand creeps up and falls to outline us, heavier and clearer on the side safe from the wind. I think, if we stay still enough for long enough, it's possible to leave a permanent imprint of you and me. "You were always getting me to write your name with one hand and mine with the other. You treated it like it was a party trick."

"It wasn't much of a party trick when you couldn't do it, Axel." Your new name sounds and feels peculiar when it shouldn't, as if I've just sunk my feet into a pair of shoes I haven't worn for a while, as if I'm wandering down a route I used to walk every day.

You sit up, break the circle. I roll onto my front to watch you use both index fingers to draw our names in the sand. An A with one, an S with the other. You pause, think, struggle and smile.

"Still can't," you reply with a laugh that lingers. You lie down in my shadow, slotting your arms behind your head. "Come on, your turn now."

I sift through my memories, spoilt for choice. I don't suppose you remember, that time when we rifled through your father's bureau for engrossment paper, purely because we liked to feel the embossed company logo? You were used to snooping – it was your favourite hobby, second to sports – and had the act refined to an art. You poked around because anything and anyone could fascinate you. Do you remember what you did after you found that paper? You gave two sheets to me and three to yourself. Then, you asked that I write you a letter and hide it somewhere in your bedroom, while you wrote one to me and hid it in mine. The idea was that we'd stumble upon the letter meant for us by chance, but we wouldn't tell the other when we had received it, if it made us feel better, or if we even liked it.

"I found mine six months later in a textbook," I murmur. "You wrote an essay on me."

"Found mine hours after you wrote it," you answer, and somehow I'm not surprised. "I tipped my room upside down so that I could read it straightaway."

"Not by chance, then. Your turn." I rest on my side, prop up my chin with a hand and observe the cogs turning in your mind.

Just like that time we searched for your father's paper, I imagine us now as a pair of misfits rifling through someone else's property. I feel that same thrill of having something not meant for me, poring over treasures that aren't mine, content to just look at them at first, but then become compelled to touch and play and tamper with, so that I can shape them to be reflective of me, like scribbling on a bit of paper with permanent ink or carving a name into wood.

I rummage though Isa's memories and claim them. The sad ones, the happy ones, all of the ones that coincide with yours. I want everything that was Isa; you want everything that was Lea.

"Your hair is longer. Much longer," you say.

"Your eyes are greener," I return. "You've grown taller than me."

You flash a smile, behind it a ghost, who never would have missed an opportunity to gloat. "Prettier too."

You laugh off the joke, but I won't correct you. The Superior gifted me with the strength of the moon, so I merely merge with it. You reflect it. Outstretched on the dune, our bodies inching a little closer – because Isa and Lea would never have sat this far apart – and my hair threading itself through yours, I can't decide on how to describe you in the blue glow of the moon. You're red and dark and endlessly burning; I teeter between calling you the first spark of an inferno, or the dying embers of one.

I delve deeper into Isa's abandoned box of memories, of everything he left behind. All those thoughts, his hopes, his heirlooms, toys that lasted a decade, moments that made him laugh, events that made him angry, scents of the familiar and tastes of home, broken promises, unsaid promises, heartfelt apologies, a six-sided essay about why he mattered. I take them all and make them mine.

"I stole your college acceptance letter," I opt for next. "I didn't want you to go."

"Hmm? Well, I stole your first kiss."

I scoff. "Not _mine_, you haven't."

You sit up on your elbows. There's a spark between our lips, an intangible flicker of a replay, an act and a pastime once done over and over. I push down, encouraging you to let me in so that I can taste the old and the new. It's not awkward or rushed or desperate, it's nothing like our first time.

You draw back from me, though only by a hair's breadth. "Have now." You stick out your tongue and it grazes my lips. "Actually, I recall a lot of firsts with you."

"Don't get any ideas." Our next kiss is lazy, a habit as common and meaningless as the twitch of a thumb. I frown, unimpressed, and draw you into a sitting position by pulling away every time I'm millimetres within reach. You growl in protest. I finally settle my mouth over yours so that you don't mistake my actions as an attempt to flee.

"Done something like this as well," you murmur, swinging a leg over me, so desperate and starved.

We had done something like this, and I'm glad you remember. It was when you had come back from a family holiday, and I, too eager and desperate to see you, flung open your car door such that it hit the wall and earned a dent. Your father examined the damage and joked, "It'll be cheaper next time if we just _bring_ you with us, **Saïx**!" But I hadn't been listening, so occupied in clambering into your seat, choking out your name. "**Axel**, **Axel**, I missed you so much, **Axel**."

You straddle me now, raking your fingers through my hair, smoothing it to one side to expose my neck. You know what makes me shudder, and you don't let me down.

"That holiday was rubbish without you," you mutter. It was years ago, and you still take offense at it. I smile into the curve of your neck. "By the way. Nerd," you throw at me.

"Pisshead," I reply automatically, and you reward my correct answer with a laugh. Our foreheads press together and you sit comfortably on my thigh.

I know you are recalling those numerous occasions when you fell out of a bar in a drunken stupor. I could hold on for hours; you were gone by the first glass. One time, we stumbled into a train station and you tried to order a basket of kumquats from the ticket booth, and burst into tears when they said they had ran out. "H-how can they not have them, **Saïx**?" you wailed, and I, upset because you were upset, had screamed for the train attendant to take us to the nearest kumquat tree.

**My** memories are so much fun.

**My **memories are perfect, because they're **mine**.

You rest your chin on my shoulder, suddenly very still. A sprig of nostalgia is with us for the briefest of seconds, and then you mutter to me, "Are you scared?"

"No. You?"

"Yes. We'll forget," you continue, and the words – and the truth in them – sting. I don't want to remind you that it will soon be beyond us to feel scared or a loss in what we no longer have.

"Well, after that, we could just pretend," I suggest. "Everything that's pretend starts from truth."

I hear the beginning of some dissent, but you manage to suppress it as I murmur to you, "Matchstick."

"Blueberry."

We steal their memories for now, delving in the box until our fingernails scrape the bottom, choosing which one to play with today, which one to save for tomorrow. We'll run that box dry, triple checking because we want to have experienced them all, before the novelty finally wears off.

One day we'll look back on that stash of treasure, Axel, and see nothing but someone else's junk.


End file.
